


Three Words

by myinfinitenutshell



Category: The Blacklist (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-04
Updated: 2015-11-04
Packaged: 2018-04-29 20:19:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 770
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5141222
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/myinfinitenutshell/pseuds/myinfinitenutshell





	Three Words

When Red saw Lizzie fall to the ground, her white cotton shirt blossoming in red, something snapped in him. He reloaded his pistol, stood up, and fired.

One man down.

(His left shoulder whipped back when a bullet hit his upper bicep.)

He fired again. And again.

A second man fell. A third.

(He felt hot, searing pain in his side. Then his calf. His thigh. That third bullet sent him to his knees.)

“Raymond!” Dembe shouted, but Red ignored him.

A fourth man fell.

And then Dembe crashed into Red, sending the both of them to the cement floor and covering Red with his own muscular body. Red tried to fight Dembe off, but Dembe was too strong, too heavy. So Red had no choice but to stay there as Dembe shot at the remaining five men with a gun in each hand. Red had nothing else to do but stare at Lizzie, at the blood pooling around her, and at her blonde hair scattered about her head. There was a single drop of blood on her cheek. Red had the urge to crawl over and wipe it off, to wipe all the blood off and make her perfect again. To make her whole.

“Lizzie,” he whispered, stretching a bloody hand in her direction, willing her eyes to open, choking back a sob. “Lizzie!”

Everything turned black.

 

Light. Bright white light. And a beeping sound, slow and regular.

“He’s waking!” someone said, and Dembe appeared, grasping Red’s hand.

“How do you feel?” he asked Red in his clipped accent.

Red blinked his eyes, looking around. “Where am I?” he asked. His throat was dry. His mind was foggy. How long had he been unconscious? What had happened? Something important had occurred. Something terrible. What was it?

“We’re in the warehouse off Kent Street,” Dembe said, “the one we reserved for medical emergencies.”

What had Red forgotten?

“You lost a lot of blood,” Dembe said. “You almost died.”

Red hadn’t died.

But Lizzie, she—

Red heard the beeping on the monitor increase as he suddenly remembered everything: the ambush, the bullets, Lizzie getting hit and falling to the ground, blood— _too_ much blood—gushing out of the hole in her chest.

“Lizzie!” Red shouted with hoarse voice, trying to get up.

Dembe pushed Red down. “She lives, Raymond. She lives.”

He kept talking but Red couldn’t hear a word. He felt relief surge through his bloodstream, his breath coming in sweet, painful gulps.

She was alive.

Lizzie was alive!

“Dembe, where is she?” Red asked, interrupting whatever Dembe had been saying.

“She is here, Raymond,” Dembe said, pointing to a sheet of cloudy plastic to Red’s left.

Red turned his head and could just barely make out the shape of another hospital bed, another beeping monitor, another broken body.

“Lizzie,” Red murmured, trying to get up again.

“You can’t get up!” Dembe said as he pushed Red back down. “You’re too weak!”

“I have to see her,” Red said. “I have to—I have to—”

There were too many things he had to do.

He had to tell Lizzie the truth. He had to tell her about her mother. He had to tell her why he never returned home that snowy night, why he became a monster, the Concierge of Crime, why he kept on waking and breathing and living every day even though he despised the creature he’d become.

And he had to tell her how he felt about her. Three words. Three simple words—that’s all it’d take.

It’d almost been too late for him to say them.

When Dembe saw that Red would not relax, he nodded to a nurse. She helped Dembe unlock the hospital bed wheels, and as he moved Red’s bed toward Lizzie, the nurse pulled back the plastic.

Lizzie looked so frail, her fire gone, her ice blue eyes hiding behind closed lids. But it was his Lizzie and she was alive. Right now, that’s all that mattered.

Dembe wheeled Red’s bed right next to Lizzie’s, and Red stretched out his wounded arm to grab her hand. It hurt. But he grit his teeth and kept on reaching, such a small distance seeming epicly impossible. When his fingers finally wrapped around hers, he held on tight.

“Don’t you leave me, Lizzie,” he whispered. “I have to—I have to tell you something.”

There was no response.

Red fought down tears. “And I’m not telling you until you come back. Do you hear?”

Still, nothing.

“Don’t you leave me.” He gripped her hand more tightly. “Don’t you dare leave.”

And he didn’t let go.


End file.
